


Hook, Line, and Sinker

by Likerealpeopledo



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Canon Compliant, Communication, Dating, Developing Relationship, Fishing, Fluff, M/M, if these two ever communicated, waders as an aphrodisiac
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-20
Updated: 2019-12-20
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:35:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21868378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Likerealpeopledo/pseuds/Likerealpeopledo
Summary: Patrick takes David fishing. It goes as well as can be expected.“Everything okay over there?” Patrick ventured when David was quiet for too long of a stretch.“Well, when you talked about wearing sexy rubber pants, I don’t think this is what I had in mind.”
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose
Comments: 100
Kudos: 218
Collections: Schitt's Creek Open Fic Night 2.0





	Hook, Line, and Sinker

David was standing in muck.

That couldn’t be the technical term for it, he thought; there was probably a better, more ecologically accurate name for it. Mud, maybe, but was it mud if it was still _under_ water? This was the kind of philosophical question David never thought he would need to posit. How much water qualified dirt to be _other_ dirtier, wetter things? But here he was, in a creek bed, standing next to his boyfriend, regretting his choices.

Well, one choice. This choice. The fishing.

For someone also mired in...something, Patrick was standing inhumanly still and looking positively serene. Patrick’s hair was coppery in the sun; he looked like a shiny penny that David wished he could carry with him, everywhere. 

There was a slight undulation in the water, which caused David to wonder if algae or some strain of fishy syphilis could land on him, then stick to his sweater. Why he had chosen this Phillip Lim sweater when he’d been told they were going to be standing in water, he’d never know. There was a chance that he hadn’t believed Patrick fully when he’d described what they’d be doing. Like the time Patrick said they were going to a paint your own pottery class, but he had really taken David to a new contemporary art exhibit in Elm Valley. That had been a lovely evening and one David had enjoyed immensely. Especially when they were asked to leave because they couldn’t stop making out around all the phallic sculptures. 

This was not that.

“Everything okay over there?” Patrick ventured when David was quiet for too long of a stretch.

“Well, when you talked about wearing sexy rubber pants, I don’t think this is what I had in mind.”

“Did I say sexy?” Patrick raised a quizzical brow. David couldn’t tell if the corners of Patrick’s mouth were turning down in a smile or a frown. It was somewhere in the middle, where his face was still deciding.

David’s own face decided on a frowny grimace. “It was heavily implied.”

“I don’t think that I’ve ever suggested that my waders were sexy. I mean. I’m wearing them. That I did tell you.” He gestured almost too proudly at the ridiculous khaki-green rubber pants that ended in equally horrific waterproof rubber boots. “And you can clearly see...what they are.” 

David had to admit that Patrick did not look unattractive in his fishing ensemble, with his waders and the snug white t-shirt that he’d bought on sale at Canadian Tire. The cotton sleeves strained delectably against his thick biceps and David was suspicious that Patrick was purposely buying his t-shirts a size smaller now, with the specific aim of murdering David...with sinew. To distract himself from a muscle-related demise and subsequent drowning, David reached over to fiddle with one of the buckles on Patrick’s chest. The buckles were oversized and looked like seatbelts on crack but they emphasized Patrick’s...everything, which was patently unfair. “You look very nice. But should we wear an accessory that doubles as a safety feature?”

“They’re straps, David. If we didn’t have them, our pants would fall down and bunch around our ankles.”

 _Our pants._ No. David had almost forgotten that he was also wearing the same hideous fishing waders over his own designer joggers. The difference was that while Patrick managed to look rugged and outdoorsy in his, David looked like he was at a dress rehearsal for an off-off-Broadway production of _Moby Dick._ He’d tried to block out what he was wearing the moment he’d clicked ( _shudder_ ) them into place this morning. Clothing shouldn’t make noise as you dressed. Clothing should only speak when spoken to— well, it definitely shouldn’t “click.”

David’s eyes scanned the knee-deep water that Patrick had convinced him to enter. Wearing rubber pants. Surrounded by aquatic wildlife. If he ended up with a live fish flopping down his pants like he was some sort of hapless cartoon character, so help him. “I just thought...that maybe there would be a river—” He made a broad slicing gesture that made him feel vaguely powerful, “—running through it.”

“Okay, we do not live in rural Montana. I never promised any rushing water.” Patrick used the inside of his elbow to wipe a perfectly formed bead of sweat off his brow and David was caught between two conflicting impulses, though they both seemed to include a desire to lick Patrick. “And just in case, I think I should also tell you that Brad Pitt isn’t coming.”

David only had a few references for what fishing looked like; he couldn’t help that most of them were cinematic. He surveyed his boyfriend again, sun tingeing the apples of his cheeks pink, a few days of beard growth shading in his jaw and chin. Patrick looked healthy and robust— _ooh, burly_ —like he might also be able to chop down a tree on their way back to the car. That stirred up feelings David didn’t know he had about Patrick and axes and...okay, that was a different date.

It dawned on David too slowly that right now, Patrick could in fact assume the role of the Brad Pitt fisherman in this scenario, and he could try to acknowledge how lucky he was to have that. 

David leaned in to kiss Patrick and managed to catch the corner of Patrick’s mouth. Patrick helpfully turned his face, so David could have better access, and Patrick’s lips were soft under his. He tasted like the open air and peppermint from his morning tea and even though David would have preferred to press him up against a sturdy surface, kissing him in the middle of the creek worked too. It made David’s knees a little weak, actually, and Patrick made a tiny noise into his mouth. Nothing so loud as to scare the fish. It felt a little like kissing Patrick in the backroom so customers wouldn’t hear, or when Ray was threatening to invite them to watch movies together. Quiet. Clandestine. Stealthy. It was the purest version of an illicit activity David had ever taken part in and he loved it.

“That was nice.” David half-whispered as he pulled back, almost forgetting that his ankles were level with a creature called a crappie right now. 

“It was, yes.” Patrick was blushing and David wanted to loop his fingers around the fasteners of Patrick’s pants and draw him closer, but he couldn’t risk leaving his pole one-handed for too long, so he settled for knocking his shoulder against Patrick’s and maneuvering so his boot was touching Patrick’s boot underwater. 

Everything was fine, bordering on romantic even, until a flock, or maybe it was a murder, of birds flew too close for comfort. 

The helicoptering motion he made with his arms was nothing compared to the undignified squawking noise he produced in an effort to inform the birds _in their own language_ he was not to be trifled with, or attacked, or treated as a statue. While he stood motionless in a creek, like an idiot. Patrick’s reaction was fairly placid in comparison, as though he didn’t view dive-bombing avian attacks as a serious threat. As if birds flying overhead were perfectly normal while one fished.

“Are you going to be okay?” Patrick was biting his lip, so David doubted the question was entirely genuine.

“No.” David stomped his foot, underwater, and it did absolutely nothing. Maybe a ripple. It was embarrassing. He stomped his foot again and Patrick looked at him as if he was having some sort of fit. He might have been. “Who do I see about a refund?”

“A refund?” Patrick’s voice went high, masked only slightly by the sounds of nature. Nature. That David was standing in. Hostage. He was a hostage of nature. “When did you pay to have this experience? _Who_ did you pay?”

David didn’t want to dignify that with an answer. It was hard to collect one’s dignity when one was clad in neoprene for recreation. “Well, maybe not a refund in the strictest sense—”

“Okay. So no refund then.” Maybe the lines around Patrick’s mouth went a little pinched, but it was hard to tell in the sun. “Ronnie said she caught a brook trout out here last week. Maybe we’ll get one too.”

David assumed that was a type of fish but he felt guilty asking, so instead he stood silent as Patrick flicked his wrist and deftly cast his fishing line out into the water. David knew it was called casting because Patrick had gone over and over _line casting_ with him in preparation for this day, and in excruciating detail. David had almost cast a line right into traffic during their practice run in the alley behind the store.

Line sent back into the nearly-still waters, Patrick went quiet again, dropping his shoulders with a long exhale and looking off into the distance. When they’d planned this excursion, prior to the Unveiling of the Rubber Pants, Patrick had promised this would be relaxing. Like a day at the spa, he’d said. David didn’t want to know the kinds of spas Patrick had gone to that were comparable to this; maybe his hometown had mud baths or goat yoga or something else that was equally terrifying, because this was hardly something David found meditative.

David looked around, at the expanse of blue sky overhead, the lush green of the creek bed, and back at his boyfriend, whose eyes were now half-closed as he held onto his rod—there were literally no fishing words that didn’t sound like they weren’t making a double entendre. It was terrible and fantastic in equal measure. Patrick really seemed to be enjoying the simple act of fishing, with the worms (god, the worms) on the hooks and the mud and the bright sunlight glowing on his beautiful tinged-pink face. He looked peaceful, the same way he did after he finished budget projections, or when he was just back from a hike, or at night, when they were finally able to fall asleep together. 

Based on current experience, fishing definitely did not feel like falling asleep in Patrick’s arms. But maybe it could. 

David indiscriminately moved his fishing pole around, bending his elbow and releasing it, just for something to do. Nothing seemed to be happening, fish-wise, and honestly, he didn’t think he wanted to know if there was. Based on how the baiting process had gone, David didn’t want to see anything else attached to the sharp hook. 

Another few minutes passed. This activity was endless; it was full of infinite sets of passing minutes.

“Why didn’t you bring chairs again?” David asked, feeling as if Patrick had definitely mentioned chairs. He’d been dating Patrick for a few months now and there was already so much territory they’d traversed together that David had never experienced before. Kissing someone that he respected and cared about. Taking things slow. That thing Patrick could do with his tongue that made David black out. But there was uncharted territory, too. “I feel like you may have oversold this.”

David’s words fell on distracted ears, though, as Patrick’s face turned away because something was finally tugging on his line. Patrick’s shoulders tensed and he was actually doing what they had come here to do—he had caught a fish. It was small and iridescent and it was definitely a fish—it had gills—and David felt a strange sense of pride, even though he had nothing to do with it and was actively hoping they encountered zero live fish during this process.

There was a cooler and a bucket sitting nearby: the first with their lunch, which Patrick had packed, and the bucket for the fish that he’d planned to catch. The fish-catching bucket was several times larger than the lunch cooler, meaning Patrick possessed high hopes that David would become an expert angler (a term he’d learned when he’d googled ‘appropriate fishing attire’) in a few short hours. David was still getting used to Patrick’s faith in his abilities, in him.

David watched through his own fingers as Patrick deftly went through the process of unhooking the fish and David fully expected him to throw his first catch of the day into the bucket or at least ask David to take a picture of him proudly holding it aloft like a trophy but Patrick didn’t. Instead, he bent his knees, dipping his hand and the freshly caught fish down into the water. When Patrick rose again, the fish was gone.

David gasped. Loudly enough that Patrick’s shoulders jumped.

“If they’re too small, we let them go. Remember? Being in the slot?” Patrick reminded him patiently. 

David wanted to argue that practice seemed both elitist and demeaning to small-boned fish but he didn’t want to admit that he’d started to drift off when Patrick was telling him about fish being “in the slot” because he was picturing...other slots. A lot of things about this hobby were vaguely filthy, including the actual hobby itself. David was going to have to take a lot of showers afterward, and hopefully he could convince Patrick to join him.

Patrick rehooked a new worm from the plastic box on the belt of his waders and fluidly recast his line, then turned back to David, who had given up the pretense of even holding his fishing rod and just abandoned it onshore during the catch and release fiasco. “David, how do you plan on catching a fish without your pole? Are you planning on reaching into the water like a bear and plucking them out with your hands?”

“First of all, ew. No. Definitely not. Second of all, are there bears?”

Patrick did what David wished he had the strength to do and ignored the question about bears. “Hey, were you saying something earlier about me overselling this?” Patrick asked casually. He wasn’t even looking David in the eye because he was focused on feeding out more of his line. Or maybe because he was about to break up with David for not fishing correctly.

David was very tempted to launch himself into a full-scale denial of his previous statement. No one David had dated before had ever stuck around after he’d expressed any kind of dissenting opinion—even about pizza toppings—and he was still adjusting to the fact that this might be different. Might. “Hmm?”

Patrick’s left eyebrow cocked in a question mark. “Are you not...enjoying this?”

“I didn’t—No. Of course. I am.” 

“Yes. I often confuse constant complaining with overwhelming interest.” He didn’t sound angry. It wasn’t that. David didn’t think Patrick was capable of anger. Annoyance, sure. Irritation, yes. A strong desire to be right, absolutely. But he didn’t sound like he was any of those things. He sounded...disappointed. “David, if you want to go, we’ll go.”

David didn’t want to go. He wanted to kiss Patrick in knee-deep water and help him reapply his sunscreen and touch Patrick’s warm elbow with his own elbow because their hands were occupied. It was almost as if the idea of leaving was now worse than the idea of staying. This was such a 1950s farmer in Iowa way to date. Patrick was old fashioned and David wanted to see what that was like, being old fashioned. “No, no, I think I just need a fishing break.”

The fact that they hadn’t been fishing long enough to warrant a break didn’t seem to be lost on Patrick, but he complied anyway. He reeled in his line, dropped his pole back against his shoulder, and with his hand at the small of David’s back, carefully led him back over to the rocky outcropping where the cooler and David’s fishing gear were sitting. He grabbed a bottle of water and gave it to David along with a handful of antibacterial wipes and trial size hand sanitizers. “I figured you’d want to bathe in both of those before you consumed any food.”

Patrick was right, except David just wanted to bathe. Immediately. But David wiped his hands and sanitized and did what he could to feel less like things were crawling on him. He took a drink of water and watched Patrick do the same and tried to will away the pit forming in his stomach. 

“You can tell me if you don’t like something, David. I’m not saying you shouldn’t tell me.” Patrick spoke first—his tone was almost flat now—and the pit went positively cavernous. David did not want to be broken up with while wearing the world’s homeliest bondage gear. “But it is okay if we do something that _I_ like to do?” 

David was baffled. Patrick had expressed zero displeasure at any point on any of their dates. He seemed, on the outside, to like everything just fine. 

This was the moment David first discovered that wide open spaces actually made it easier to have a panic spiral. All the fresh air made David’s head feel as if it could actually spin right off into the atmosphere, like an errant balloon. 

And David’s head kept filling with the helium of no good, very bad thoughts about what Patrick did and didn’t like. Maybe what he didn’t like was David. Maybe he was realizing how difficult it was to keep liking David. That happened swiftly, usually, but Patrick liked taking things slow. “You don’t like what we do together?”

“David. How many times do you think the average human being needs to watch _Dirty Dancing_?”

“But you always tell me how hot Patrick Swayze is.”

“He is hot, David, and his hips...but no, that’s not…” Patrick was flustered. It was cute how flustered he would still get. But flustered people could still break up with David, and he had to be vigilant. “Why do you think I’ve watched _Dirty Dancing_ twelve times before you’ve watched _Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid_ with me once?”

There were probably plenty of reasons for that, not the least of which was Patrick hadn’t really ever asked. Should David have offered?

Patrick unscrewed the lid of his water bottle and raised it to his lips. David felt like there was something he was missing. Patrick glanced over at him, his eyes soft. “Can I tell you something?”

“Yes, yes, of course.”

Patrick must have heard the panic in his voice because he gently removed the bottle from David’s hand, took David’s fingers into his own thick ones. Patrick’s hands were calloused. David loved those calluses because they were from things that Patrick loved to do, and he didn’t know how he felt about Patrick yet, if it was love, but he certainly felt like he wanted to love him. He could love fishing. If they did it indoors. Or on a yacht. Or in the Seychelles. 

“You look terrified. Your eyebrows are both…” Patrick released David’s hand so he could hold his index fingers up to his forehead and angled them so they pointed directly to the sky. 

“My eyebrows are not finger sized,” David said, briefly incensed. 

“No.” Patrick reached over to smooth one as if in apology. “I have an app,” he said softly enough that David almost didn’t hear him.

“Excuse me?” 

“It’s, uh, a date generator kind of thing. It’s stupid.” Patrick looked up at the sky, down at his hands, anywhere David wasn’t. David wanted to put himself in Patrick’s line of sight. Patrick seemed caught now and exposed, like he was one of the too small fish, and David could see through his translucent scales right to his fragile bones.“You put in interests and preferences and locations and it suggests...David, I don’t know what I’m doing.” 

“With me?” David knew his voice was just as small as Patrick’s had been.

Patrick looked alarmed. “No, not with you. I know what I’m doing with _you.”_ He squeezed David’s hand. “Just...we don’t have a ton in common. On paper. And I want to do things with you that excite you and keep you interested and I don’t...the algorithm can only take me so far.” David moved his own hand so it rested on Patrick’s forearm. No one had ever wooed David with math before. No one had ever wooed David, full stop.“I mean, I override it sometimes. The pottery class, for instance.”

David pictured Patrick plugging little details into his phone and taking time and care to think of things that he thought David might like and rejecting them when he thought David might not. David didn’t know what that feeling was, the one in his chest and in his throat, the one that felt overwhelmed by something warm and good. “Do you ever put things _you_ like to do in it?”

“I didn’t put fishing in the app, no. But I thought since things were going so well, maybe I could branch out and we could try some things I liked.” David had seen the kinds of things that Patrick was interested in. From afar, anyway. He liked that he could maintain a safe distance from Patrick’s hobbies, because then, if he ever lost Patrick, he wouldn’t lose everything else. Also, Patrick’s hobbies were mostly sports and David didn’t sports. 

“I do want to do those things. Like, theoretically. In practice—” he gestured to his rubber pants. “In practice, this is less than ideal, wouldn’t you say?”

“I think you look cute in my dad’s old waders.” Patrick said with an absolutely straight face and David felt the hollow in his stomach slowly filling in, just from the way Patrick’s lips didn’t twitch as he’d teased him. Like he knew what David needed.

“Never say those words to me again, please.” David joked, but he was also deadly, deadly serious. 

“Sorry.” David watched Patrick’s finger trace a pattern on the palm of his own hand, as Patrick bit his lip and considered his next words. It didn’t feel like they were going to break up over this anymore, but he didn’t know what would happen next, either. He thought again about the idea of loving Patrick, at what shape that might take in his body. If there was something similarly David-shaped swimming around inside of Patrick. If Patrick had this same warm, sea-sick feeling every time he considered what things might be like if they went fishing together next month, or next year, or ten years from now. 

Patrick moved closer, his rubber clad knee encroaching into David’s space. David liked how easily Patrick took up space, even though he wasn’t big. He was just comfortable. He helped David feel comfortable. “So if you don’t want to talk about my dad’s waders, should we talk about my mom’s or—” 

David kissed him then, more in self-defense than anything, but as Patrick deepened the kiss, it turned into something new. David was always fascinated by the differences in their styles; how David always kissed Patrick like it might be the last time, and Patrick always kissed him like it was the first. Not to say that he was fumbling or tentative, but that it was exciting and thrilling and fresh, every time. 

“I want to keep fishing,” David announced as they separated. Patrick’s eyes were glassy and he looked a little kiss-drunk. “If something is important to you, I want to try it. At least once. But don’t...you don’t have to pretend it’s a spa if it’s not a spa.”

Patrick blinked a few times, slowly coming back into himself. His cheeks were redder than they’d been; David really did want to reapply his sunscreen. “But it is a spa.”

David looked around and made a sweeping gesture with his arm. Holding a fishing pole had really impacted his ability to gesticulate wildly and he wanted to make up for lost time. He and Patrick were always making up for lost time. “This. Is. Not. A. Spa.” He looked at Patrick, at his blissed out expression and his biteable lips, at the ease in his shoulders and at the corners of his eyes as they crinkled in a smile.

“Maybe not in a licensed aesthetician kind of way—” Patrick started. David had taught Patrick that, when they’d realized they had each envisioned different definitions of the word _facial._ “But I made us an appointment for that, too. In case.”

“In case of emergency, break glass...that kind of in case?”

“No. Maybe. Yes.” Patrick leaned over to kiss him again, this time something soft and almost apologetic. “It doesn’t matter to me what we do together, David. I liked the art exhibit. I liked getting asked to leave the art exhibit.” There it was, the bashful smile, the one that David still had trouble believing was directed at him. “I have had the time of my life with you and Patrick Swayze. But every once in a while, do you think...maybe…”

David felt selfish then, because he knew what Patrick was asking. And he always wanted Patrick to ask, and keep asking, even when David complained or acted miserable. He wasn’t miserable. He’d be much more miserable if Patrick stopped asking, stopped caring, started taking away the little bits of himself David earned each time he watched Patrick doing something he loved.

“Yes. Yes, I can find the inherent hip action in anything.” Patrick’s face froze in confusion for a moment at that, until he realized, maybe, what David was suggesting. “If you can carry a watermelon twelve times, I can watch your dance movie, too.”

Patrick’s face did not unfreeze until finally, it split with one of his more radiant smiles. It was brighter than the sun reflecting off the too-still water and any doubt that David may have had about what David-shaped feelings existed in Patrick were quickly dashed by the sheer dazzle of his smile. “It’s _Butch Cassidy and the Sun_ dance _Kid._ There is no dancing. That I can recall.” Patrick moved closer, pulled David up to a stand so he could wrap his arms around David’s waist. “But there is a young Paul Newman.”

“Is that an old Brad Pitt?” David asked, only a tenth serious. 

“Yes, he is an old Brad Pitt.” Patrick said, nosing at the collar of David’s sweater. “So, do you think you’d want to get back to fishing? Or was I totally wrong about everything and I should go back to using the app?”

“I don’t know if I’d say that,” David said, his hand moving slowly toward the buckles on Patrick’s waders. “You were pretty right about these pants.” He pressed the button that latched them over Patrick’s shoulder and one strap dropped. David looked up and caught Patrick’s eye, the way his mouth opened in a kind of pleasant surprise, and David pressed the second button, dropping Patrick’s waders fully to the ground. “Always wear these pants.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my beta [Distractivate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Distractivate/pseuds/Distractivate%E2%80%9D) who taught me everything I know about “being in the slot,” and for very specific fishing knowledge as well for holding my hand, effusive cheerleading, and constant reassurance even as deadline loomed. And for helping me make this less about dirt and more about feelings.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Hook, Line, and Sinker](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27116485) by [DelilahMcMuffin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DelilahMcMuffin/pseuds/DelilahMcMuffin)




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